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State of Union Near, G.O.P. Draws Line on Spending

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans, seeking to recapture the debate over the country’s economic recovery in advance of President Obama’s State of the Union address, warned Sunday that they would oppose any new spending initiatives and press ahead with their plans for budget cuts in every realm of government, including the military.

In a series of carefully choreographed appearances on Sunday morning talk shows here, Republicans sought to draw the battle lines for the Tuesday night speech over government spending. With Mr. Obama planning to call for “investments” of tax dollars in specific areas like education, infrastructure and technology, Republicans insisted that “investment” was just another name for spending that the nation can ill afford.

“With all due respect to our Democratic friends, any time they want to spend, they call it investment, so I think you will hear the president talk about investing a lot Tuesday night,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending in very many areas.”

Mr. McConnell’s House counterpart, Representative Eric Cantor, said that his party would demand “deep spending cuts” in all areas and that the military, an area of the budget that Republicans ordinarily view as sacrosanct, would not be exempt. “Every dollar should be on the table,” Mr. Cantor said in an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC.

The appearances laid the groundwork for a fierce clash between the Republicans and Mr. Obama over spending, the size and scope of government and the federal deficit; that fight could have profound effects on the path the nation takes as it emerges from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It occurs against the backdrop of the early days of the 2012 presidential race, as Mr. Obama prepares for his re-election campaign and Republicans position themselves to pick a candidate to challenge him.

Mr. Obama will use the State of the Union address to argue that government should be a tool for creating jobs and strengthening a fragile recovery through spending in areas like high-speed rail, scientific research, clean energy programs and college grants — a message that appeals to Democratic voters. In effect, Mr. Obama is trying to wall off those areas from spending cuts and is daring Republicans to defy him.

Republicans are insisting that spending is not the answer; with the federal deficit already estimated at $1.3 trillion and their base still up in arms over Mr. Obama’s health care bill, which conservatives regard as the ultimate exercise in big government, they are demanding that Washington make sweeping and immediate spending cuts.

“Our Congress is going to be a cut-and-grow Congress,” Mr. Cantor said.

The public itself seems split, or perhaps confused. Americans overwhelmingly say that in general, they prefer cutting government spending to paying higher taxes, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published last week. Yet their preference for spending cuts, even in programs that benefit them, dissolves when they are presented with specific options related to Medicare and Social Security, the programs that directly touch millions of lives and are the biggest drivers of the long-term deficit.

The spending versus cutting debate is, in effect, a reprise of the fight Mr. Obama has been having with Republicans since the outset of his presidency. But this one occurs in a very different political context, with a divided Congress and a president who is trying to reposition himself as a centrist after the self-described “shellacking” his party took in the midterm elections.

Now, two months after Republicans won back control of the House and increased their numbers in the Senate, vowing to make spending cuts a top priority, Mr. Obama is himself doing better in the eyes of the public. Americans are showing the first hints of optimism about the recovery and are giving the president credit for working in a bipartisan way during the lame-duck session of Congress — sentiments that are reflected in his job approval ratings, which are inching upward.

Photo

President Obama will use the State of the Union address to argue that government should be a tool for creating jobs and strengthening a fragile recovery through spending in multiple areas.Credit
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Each side is trying to gain the upper hand in the spending debate. Where Republicans campaigned on a theme of deep reductions in federal spending, calling for $100 billion in cuts this fiscal year alone, Mr. Obama is trying to sell the public a more nuanced, gradual approach.

In speeches over the past several months, and especially over the last week, Mr. Obama has outlined an approach that emphasizes growth and competition and a slow easing of government intervention in the economy — as opposed to the quick pullback Republicans want.

“To borrow an analogy, cutting the deficit by cutting investments in areas like education, areas like innovation — that’s like trying to reduce the weight of an overloaded aircraft by removing its engine,” Mr. Obama said in a December speech at a community college in Winston-Salem, N.C. “It’s not a good idea.”

The debate will take center stage on Tuesday in the House, when Republicans are expected to take up a resolution calling for sharp and immediate cuts in a raft of domestic programs. The timing, just hours before Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address, is no coincidence.

Republicans are themselves divided over how much of the budget they can realistically slash. The leadership has already acknowledged that it would be difficult if not impossible to fulfill the $100 billion campaign pledge, and instead has suggested that cuts prorated for the balance of the fiscal year would be more realistic. Tea Party conservatives are pushing the leaders to stick to the $100 billion target. Now the leaders face the task of uniting the rank-and-file around challenging the president.

“The simple message is ‘We’re broke, and there’s a lot that America can invest in without having the government do it,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who spent years as a top aide on Capitol Hill. “I think the point that Republicans and conservatives would make is that we have already spent way too much.”

Both sides are well aware of the budget battle of 1995 between President Bill Clinton and a newly empowered Republican-led Congress, which led to a government shutdown. Pressure built for the government to reopen, and Mr. Clinton was able to paint the Republicans as extreme and salvage his presidency, going on to win re-election.

For both sides, there are risks.

After two years of watching himself be defined by Republicans as a tax-and-spend liberal — especially after the bitter debate over health care — and alienating business leaders, Mr. Obama has lately been reaching out to the business community and delivering the kind of pro-growth message that will be the backbone of Tuesday night’s address.

The challenge for the president, who won plaudits from the public for cooperating with Republicans during the lame-duck session, is to convince independents and centrists of his fiscal responsibility without further alienating his base by seeming too cooperative or moving too far toward the center.

The challenge for Republicans is to press their case for spending cuts without appearing dogmatic and irresponsible. An early test will be the coming vote on whether to raise the federal debt limit — typically a routine step that allows the government to extend its borrowing power so it does not default on its obligations. But such a move makes the Republican right deeply uneasy, and Mr. Cantor said Sunday that Republicans would use the vote as leverage to demand spending cuts from Democrats.

A main player for Republicans will be Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the new Budget Committee chairman and Speaker John A. Boehner’s choice to deliver the rebuttal to Mr. Obama on Tuesday night. Mr. Ryan is charged with writing a Republican budget document to counter the one Mr. Obama will propose. In announcing the selection of Mr. Ryan, Mr. Boehner signaled his party’s theme for the coming months.

“We’re broke,” the speaker said, adding that Republicans intended to “end the spending binge in Washington.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 24, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Parties Draw Battle Lines On Spending. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe